Councillors voted unanimously yesterday for staff to continue to engage with other regional councils and government agencies to find funding to address an approximately $44 million shortfall over the next 10 years in the fight against the pest trees in Otago.
A business case commissioned by the council late last year said managing 99.9% of the known wilding pine infestation in the region could avoid $2.8 billion in losses over the next 50 years due to their spread.
The work programme it recommended would cost $66m over 10 years — $44m more than the funding committed if spending by the government remained the same.
At yesterday’s environmental implementation committee, chairwoman Cr Gretchen Robertson said Otago needed help getting wilding pines under control.
"We can't lose the fight on this," she said.
"We will lose far too much if we go backwards at all.
"And it's not a forever thing either.
"This isn't an ongoing funding-forever type of thing.
"We need to have the conversation that investing now will save money in the future.
"We need wilding pines to get to a sustainable level where landowners can control them themselves."
Cr Robertson said 70% of the region was assessed as "very highly vulnerable".
The amount of water flowing out of an afforested watershed was reduced by up to 80%.
Wilding pines out-competed native plants, increased the risk of wildfire, and reduced the amount of productive land.
The amount of money the council had received was "not enough to sustain the work that we need to be doing in Otago", she said.
Cr Andrew Noone said continuing conversations seeking funding was "a no-brainer".
The pest trees were part of the council’s "progressive containment" programme, which meant "maintaining the gains and making progress".
"We desperately need more money, and I wish the staff good luck with the conversations with whomever's got something to offer."
Cr Alexa Forbes, who also called yesterday’s decision a "no-brainer", said there were also regulatory measures the council could take and urged others to reconsider their understanding of "productive land".
"More and more research is showing us that sometimes land that's not ‘productive’ in the normal sense of the word is productive in other senses.
"A great example of that is snow tussocks and managing to harvest water vapour from the skies and bring it back into the land.
"The more research we do, the more we find we need to lose things like pines.
"We do need regulations," Cr Forbes said.
"We do need to think about how people are forced to control their wildings, especially in their forests."
A staff report to the committee said staff would talk to other councils about any other funding opportunities available before approaching the Ministry for Primary Industries.
